Ramsey County Attorney John Choi has filed criminal charges against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis “to hold it criminally accountable for its failure to protect children.” The charges are connected to 3 separate victims of sexual abuse by former Catholic priest Curtis Wehmeyer, who is currently serving a 5-year prison sentence for molesting two boys in his parish.

Catholic Church in the US city of Minneapolis faces criminal charges for turning a blind eye to reports of child abuse by a priest for years.

Prosecutors accused the church authorities of failure to protect children and act on repeated reports of the troubling conduct by Priest Curtis Wehmeyer.

The priest was convicted in 2013 of molesting two brothers and was defrocked and is currently in prison.

John Choi, a Minneapolis attorney, filed the criminal charges against the archdiocese, accusing it for failing “to protect children” from the abusive priest.

“Today we are alleging a disturbing institutional and systemic pattern of behavior committed by the highest levels of leadership of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis over the course of decades,” said Choi on Friday.

The criminal complaint filed by prosecutors includes six misdemeanor counts against the archdiocese, alleging that it failed to protect children from being raped by Wehmeyer.

Choi said that the archdiocese “turned a blind eye” on the matter, as they waited much too long to report the case to the police, thus giving an opportunity to the priest to destroy evidence.

FYI. This is our own, Amy Smith, SNAP Leader. Some of you may have stood with us in front of Prestonwood Baptist last year. Anyway, here is a great piece about her excellent work in support of victims.

'Betrayed by Silence,' a documentary form Minnesota Public Radio, tells the sordid tale of sexual abuse by priests, and how 3 archbishops in charge covered it up.

For decades, the archbishops who led the Catholic archdiocese in the Twin Cities maintained that they were doing everything they could to protect children from priests who wanted to rape them.

Reporters picked up those assurances and repeated them without question. Police and prosecutors took the assurances at face value. Parents believed the assurances and trusted priests with their children.

SAN ANTONIO -- A priest convicted of child sex abuse in Wisconsin in 2008 and also convicted of attempted rape of a disabled woman in El Paso in 1979 has now been tied to an alleged case of abuse in San Antonio.

Recently, a woman came forward claiming the late reverend Bruce MacArthur raped her when she was a girl in the late 1970's at Saint James Catholic Church.

The San Antonio director of 'Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests,' Barbara Boehland said the victim did not receive any help from the church and instead, reached out to SNAP.

"It takes awhile for people to come forward. It's a shameful thing. It's embarrassing. You feel filthy. It takes a lot of courage to come forward and we're really proud of this person," said Boehland.

The Archdiocese of San Antonio confirmed it believes the woman's claim, accroding to Gustavo Garcia-Siller, current archbishop, who apologized for the priest.

Boehland said the apology from the archdiocese does not make up for the fact that MacArthur was transferred to different parishes during his time with the church.

"He has 20 different assignments, seven different parishes and between that time, he did rape another victim. We're sure there are other victims out there. They had their chance to come forward about this, they've known for 10 years," said Boehland.

Boehland claimed his supervising bishops knew about MacArthur's criminal record but permitted him to move forward with the church

"There's people that can be held responsible for this. There are people that can go to prison for this," said Boehland.

The Vatican has defrocked its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, an archbishop from Poland who was accused of sexually abusing boys while he served as the pope’s representative in the Caribbean nation.

The former archbishop, Jozef Wesolowski, 65, is the first papal nuncio known to have been removed from the priesthood because of accusations of child sexual abuse. The Vatican announced on Friday that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles abuse cases, had recently completed his canonical trial. He has two months to appeal the decision.

The former ambassador’s case has brought international scrutiny to the Vatican’s procedures for handling charges of sexual abuse. Two United Nations panels looking into the church’s handling of sexual abuse cases this year closely questioned Vatican representatives in Geneva about whether the church would discipline him.

SEATTLE, June 25 (Reuters) - The Archdiocese of Seattle has agreed to pay about $12.125 million to 30 men who alleged they were sexually abused as children and teens at two Seattle-area schools from the 1950s until 1984, their attorney said.

The men alleged in their lawsuits that the Catholic district failed to shield them from known abusers at Seattle schools operated by the Christian Brothers of Ireland, Inc.

"The Christian Brothers of Ireland, Inc, and Christian Brothers agreed in a May 2013 settlement reached in U.S. bankruptcy court to pay $16.5 million to more than 400 adults who said religious leaders sexually abused them as children." - Reuters

Dublin - The Irish government is investigating Catholic Church run homes for unwed mothers where the "illegitimate" children born there are thought to have been abused and deprived of basic necessities.

In one of dozens of such homes it is now known that nearly 796 children died, a number far higher than would be expected in such a facility. There is no record of where the children were buried, however initial reports suggested that some of them may have been buried in an area of the property once used for sewage.

"It is true that pregnant girls would have been shunned by their families and left with no one to turn to. But the fact is that the church itself had created the problem by the stigma it attached to unmarried sex — and by its refusal to allow contraception or sex education in any form." -- Martin Sixsmith, Author of 'Philomena'

The mother and baby home at Tuam in County Galway was run by the nuns of the Sisters of Bon Secours and operated between 1925 and 1961. It took in thousands of women who had committed the “mortal sin” of unwed pregnancy, delivered their babies and was charged with caring for them.

The order of Roman nuns who ran this place, the Sisters of Bon Secours - the Sisters of Good Comfort, have to date made no mention of this discovery on their website.

UNITED STATESSurvivors Network of Those Abused by PriestsFor immediate release: Tuesday, June 10, 2014Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ( 314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com )

America's bishops meet tomorrow in New Orleans. We urge officers and members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to censure - or at least harshly denounce - current and former Twin Cities bishops for the ongoing horrific cover up scandal there, especially Archbishop John Nienstedt, retired Archbishop Harry Flynn, and Archbishop Robert Carlson (who now heads the St. Louis archdiocese).

In recent depositions--Flynn claimed he couldn't recall details about predator priests 132 times,--Carlson claimed he didn't remember 193 times, and--Nienstedt admitted that he never took any action against those who enabled child sex crimes and he doesn't believe he should.

These revelations, under oath, speak volumes about how top Catholic officials are still dealing with the child sexual abuse scandal - through continued cover-ups and deceit.

For the second time this year, an international panel of experts is harshly criticizing the Catholic hierarchy for endangering children. We are grateful that more secular authorities are finally stepping up to safeguard children from powerful Catholic officials who commit and conceal devastating and widespread sexual violence against children. We hope this trend continues.

The appointment of Boston's ranking Roman Catholic priest, Sean O'Malley, to lead yet another church investigation of church sex crimes, quite contrary to John L. Allen Jr.'s opinion in the Boston Globe, does not bring instant credibility to that effort.

"If there really is to be an effort to put victims first, then the appointment of O'Malley or any other cardinal or archbishop to the commission is a clear contradiction to that claim." Tom Doyle, NCR

The closed, inbred, totalitarian clerical system itself is the problem, and should not lead the search for a solution.

And yet, it does again. Not only is O'Malley on the the commission, he leads it and is its spokesman.

"Out of weariness, one is tempted to look at news about sex abuse and church finances and conclude that the system is broken. In reality, what is broken in this 2,000-year-old church that has weathered many crises is the clerical system that has dominated it in the last few hundred years." -- NCR editorial

"What is broken in this 2,000-year-old church ... is the clerical system that has dominated it" says this NCR editorial

In February, a United Nations panel in Geneva accused the church of continuing to protect pedophile priests and urged church leaders to turn them over to law enforcement authorities. The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child said that "tens of thousands of children worldwide" had been raped or molested in the past and that abuse was continuing today. ...

Next week, the Vatican will face fresh scrutiny as another U.N. committee looks into whether the church's approach to child protection violates the U.N. Convention Against Torture. The Vatican ratified that treaty in 2002.

The pope solicited “forgiveness" on Friday for the "evil" committed by priests who rape. Survivors of priest rape were quick to respond.

"This is the status quo. Pope Francis is the third pope to apologize for the sexual abuse of minors. He's doing nothing but continues in the patterns of his predecessors. He is continuing by forming committees, by making apologies, by asking for forgiveness. And he's also following in the path of his predecessors by not doing anything, by not punishing anybody and by not ensuring that what happened to me and other kids isn't still going on," SC SNAP leader Joelle Casteix said.

Survivors know all too well that asking forgiveness at the beginning of any response to priest rape betrays a total lack of understanding and a complete disregard of the plight of the victims of clergy abuse. It is very often the first thing a perpetrator does when caught. It is part of the endlessly repetitive cycle of abuse and contrition that every person every battered in a violent marriage knows all too well.

Throwing a choice to forgive on the victim is simply more abuse and adding insult to injury. It wrongly implies a victim's choice to comply in the first place, which is never the case in clergy abuse -- morally, or in the penal code of 13 US states -- legally. These codes state unequivocally that consent is never a legal defense for clergy sexual abuse, in exactly the same way that it is never a defense for psychiatrists, psychologists or counselors who have sex with patients.

“Forgiveness” of remorseless criminals and perps is not a requirement of healing from priest abuse for victims whose lives and families have been destroyed for generations by the atrocities and pomposity of priests who rape, and the faux humility of "forgiveness" pontifications by their protectors, the bishops and popes.

Victims, says Casteix, "are always forgotten in this. The church does everything they can to make it about money and make it about policies and make it about commissions. But what they forget about are kids like me who where 15 years old, 14 years old, sexually abused, and my perpetrator got me pregnant and gave me a sexually transmitted disease and no one was there to help me," she explained.

Only 13 states have made clergy sexual relations with adult congregants illegal. Texas is one of those states, as seen in the quote taken from the Texas Penal code below.

However, in other states, although state codes protect patients from psychiatrists, psychologists or licensed social workers and counselors who have sex with their patients, the statutes do not protect unsuspecting congregants from immoral, unscrupulous and unethical clergy.

Clergy sexual abuse of children has rightfully drawn much public attention in recent years, as more and more priests have been found guilty of sexual assault or sued for covering it up.

But sex with adult congregants by a church leader, as the penal codes in 13 states make clear, is also an insidious form of human exploitation. It is certainly not mutual or fully consensual in any moral or ethical sense. It violates professional boundaries and is always a serious abuse of spiritual as well as professional power. The sexual predator of adults among the clergy exacts lasting damage on their victims and communities.

Read one victim's story as told by Erin Rhoda who writes for the Bangor Daily News:

(b) A sexual assault under Subsection (a)(1) is without the consent of the other person if:

10) the actor is a clergyman who causes the other person to submit or participate by exploiting the other person's emotional dependency on the clergyman in the clergyman's professional character as spiritual adviser; -- http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/S ... /PE.22.htm (taken Tue Apr 8, 2014)

By now, the story is amply familiar. Thousands of wayward clerics have been found to have sexually abused and emotionally scarred many more thousands of boys and girls and trustingly vulnerable adult Catholics.

"It is, too, a story of the church hierarchy as enabler: bishops who ignored the criminality, or evaded public exposure by shuffling abusers from parish to parish." -- NYTimes, 30 March 2014

Pedophile priests cannot be deterred. Complicit bishops can. Only the pope can do this. He can do it quickly and simply, by defrocking or demoting them and making it crystal clear why he is taking such actions. Consistent discipline is the missing piece. And that’s why the cover-ups continue.

A WEEK ago, Angelo Bagnasco, Roman cardinal and head of the Italian Episcopal Conference, defended the Vatican’s policy of not requiring clergy to report child sex abuse to the authorities. “The Vatican requires national laws to be respected, and we know that there is no such duty (to report abuse) under Italian law,” he told reporters.

In a Special to the Seattle Times, Puget Sound SNAP representative Mary Dispenza responds.

(b) A sexual assault [...] is without the consent of the other person if: [...] 10) the actor is a clergyman who causes the other person to submit or participate by exploiting the other person’s emotional dependency on the clergyman in the clergyman’s professional character as spiritual adviser …

Abuse and coverup of sexual abuse by clergy is not limited to Catholic priest pedophiles, nor is it limited to the clergy’s abuse of only children. It is important to remember that clergy sexual abuse can be perpetrated against children and adults. Abuse is abuse despite a person's age.

Institutions, such as churches and colleges, can and do easily become safe havens for predators, as too many institutions seek to protect their own interests and isolate members and students and their communities from reported misconduct and abuse.

Too often a religious leader's inappropriate involvement with an adult in the congregation is called an affair. Such a relationship is NOT an affair. The power differential between the clergy and the lay victim ALWAYS makes such behavior abuse.

This is taking advantage of a person's voluntary and innocent vulnerability. It is abuse, plain and simple -- abuse of a person's physical body, sexuality, spirituality, and of their mental and emotional wellness. The effects are devastating in the same way that such abuse is devastating for child victims. It is also devastating in ways that are unique to adults.

People who have suffered the trauma of sexual assault by trusted clergy often take years to process the trauma, and to come to a place where appropriate response to this rape of one’s innocence can be acknowledged, shared and dealt with in a healthy way.

But in today’s connected world, a new phenomenon is emerging for at least one group of young adult survivors. The ‘survivor’ bloggers — many who have more recently been assaulted as young adults, who understand the power of social media to correct injustices that churches often take years to address, if at all, and who are ready and willing to speak up to the injustice. These young people refuse to be ignored by the hierarchical structure of churches and the exclusivism of clergy, and take their case to each other and to the world via blogs and other forms of social media.

SNAPDFW has kept the 'Hope' emblem at the top of our website since our site's beginning. So far, however, hope for real action in combating Roman Catholic priest sexual abuse has been kept alive, not by the churches, but by the victims of those churches -- those lay women and men who continue to hold the Roman hierarchy's feet to the fire, demanding more than mere lip service for the first time in centuries of abuse and coverup.

The positive aspect of the Vatican announcement of a 'commission' to investigate abuse in the RCC is that it gives the impression that the one person in the RCC with the actual power to do something about abuse in the church finally seems to be doing so.

But this pope's primary reputation is as the 'seems-to-be' leader. His words appear hopeful, but his actions -- the ones in which he actually exercises the power invested in him (according to RCC theology) by God and an exclusivist conclave of 'Cardinal Archbishops' -- remain, in relation to priest sexual abuse -- dismal to non-existent.

This pope has issued 4 'motu proprios' since rising to the throne of Peter while posturing publicly as humble. Motu Proprios are Catholic church equivalents of institutional executive orders. They are 'do-this-or-else,' non-democratic edicts from the commander in chief. Just as were Ratzinger's motu proprios, these four are all about the church's financial assets and its reputation (in that order). Not one has to do with removing the causes for the continued shameless sexual abuse by priests, nor are they about punishing and removing those who cover it up -- the bishops.

The pope has another instrument of action - one to effect (again, according to RC theology) 'supernatural' action. He can excommunicate people -- in effect, literally, kick people out of 'the communion of saints.'

In addition to the 4 personal motu proprios about money and prestige from this pope, there is one glaring excommunication -- an Australian priest guilty of nothing more than preaching that women ought to be allowed to become catholic priests. The man was not just muffled -- as is normally done to people who disagree publicly with the Roman hierarchy party line -- but excommunicated - personally by the feel-good pope.

SNAP is hopeful, as always. But the SNAP news release of yesterday, also quoted in the NYTimes article announcing the commission today, contains the following:

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a group founded in the United States that has now become international, said the panel “perpetuates the self-serving myth that Catholic officials need more information about abuse and cover-ups.” It added: “They don’t. They need courage. They know what’s right” already.-- NYTimes, Saturday

Behind the media stick-man propped up by the new Vatican PR machine engineered by former Fox newsman and Opus Dei operant Greg Burke, this pope is doing nothing more than perpetuating the ancient Roman prejudices against women and children, and exercising his absolute prerogative to keep it all covered up, and to surround it all by holy smoke and mirrors.

Actions speak louder than words - 4 actions to protect money and prestige, and 1 action to protect the priesthood from women - those are the effective actions of this baby-kissing, bus-riding poor peoples' PR pope.

As to actually doing something about Catholic church sexual abuse by priests -- some see hope in yet another 'commission.' But as Bob Dylan once sardonically quipped about American civil rights violence, that included the murder of children in church:

We currently meet the 3rd Saturday of each month, 10 a.m. - noon, near downtown Dallas. Meeting dates are below. Please contact us at snaperin@snapnetwork.org or 469-387-9434 for the meeting location.

Remember, SNAP meetings are a safe place for survivors. You are not required to share, listening can be healing too.

February 15

March 15

April 19

May 17

June 21

July - No Meeting

August 16

September 20

October 18

November 15

December 13 (2nd Saturday) - Christmas Party

SNAP Mission

SELF HELP:

By sharing our stories, we recognize that we are not alone, and we are not guilty for what happened to us. Gradually coming to a full knowledge of this empowers us to confront the truth, and to find healthy mechanisms for healing.

EDUCATION:

We work together to educate ourselves and our communities about the effects of the abuse.

PREVENTION:

Once we learn the truth about what has happened to us, we can then use that power to bring about change. When we put our voices together, we become so strong that we can no longer not be heard.